Inspection!

Pulling into weigh stations is always a little nerve-wracking. Usually you just drive across a scale and continue on your way. But this time over a speaker we heard, “Midwest Carriers, drive around and pull into bay 1.”

Here we go.

Adam was driving and I had just woken up, so I was still buckled into the bunk. I stayed put.

I could hear the conversation. The guys seemed really nice. They checked Adam’s license, medical card and e-log, they looked under our bunk (via the outdoor hatch door) for the fire hydrant and emergency triangles, checked our coupling devices, brakes, tires, lights, and more… all the stuff on a Level 1. Overall it took maybe 10 minutes – not too painful.

And we passed. Yay!

Sometimes they’ll pull a truck in for inspection if they see something out of sorts, like a burned our marker light or a low tire – and sometimes it’s just random. So when you get pulled in, it’s natural to think, “oh boy… I hope everything’s okay.” Adam and I are good little trucker kids and inspect our truck daily like we’re supposed to, but there’s always the worry that we missed something, a light burned out since our last stop, or we didn’t quite realize something was much of a problem.

Inspections are scary, no lie. But I’ll tell you what – it’s reassuring and feels pretty awesome to pass a Level 1!

So now… we got a little sticker on our window saying we passed, and they told us that’s good for about 90 days – meaning we probably won’t get pulled in for another inspection for a while. Now when we head into a weigh station, we’ll drive over the scale and past the little office and they’ll see that sticker. Cool, hey?

This clean inspection also shows up like a gold star on Adam’s and our company’s CSA (Compliance, Safety & Accountability) score. (You can pull up CSA scores for any trucking company and see how they compare to others here: https://ai.fmcsa.dot.gov/sms/)

So that’s that. I sure hope all of our inspections go that well!

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Tonight I love that deep, relaxing sigh of relief. It feels good.

And hey…
If you’re interested in more details on the inspections, below is a quick description of the inspection we received and a link to see what the other levels include: